Managing Director, Coalition for Jewish Values & Chief Architect, Torah.org
“Good will overpower evil, and of course, love will overpower hatred.” — Rav Aryeh Scheinberg
“If a line has to be drawn, draw it around Christians and Jews; We are United.” — Pastor John Hagee, who came to show his solidarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvIV7knRU2Q
Not that this should surprise anyone, but we now know that Yishai Schlissel was diagnosed with serious mental issues, was hospitalized for over a month — and was released from prison, three weeks before the same parade that he attacked ten years earlier, without monitoring or supervision.
Two-time gay pride parade stabber Yishai Shlissel suffered “a psychotic incident,” Israeli news revealed Wednesday – and police still did not take this into account when he was released last month… In March 2009, Shlissel was transferred to psychiatric care from prison, where he was then treated for a month and a half after being diagnosed as a paranoid psychotic.
He may be deemed unfit to stand trial.
Earlier, a well-known blogger asserted that I was being “extremely defensive. To the point of paranoia,” when I posted that I suspected a wave of bigotry would come our way in the wake of this atrocity. Within hours, though, he’d been proven wrong — sadly, I was not paranoid, just perceptive in my prognostication.
Obviously, it is true that “not every outside critic is a bigot.” But I was not predicting constructive criticism — I was expecting calumny.
Though that writer insisted that “no one is slandering the entire Orthodox community,” an article entitled “The entire Hareidi community spilled this blood” appeared just hours after mine. Similarly, though he said “the message is not that Charedim have to change their Hashkafos,” Jay Michaelson of the Forward sent exactly that message, in an article entitled “The Ultra-Orthodox Hatred Behind the Stabbing at Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade,” in which he quoted a psychologist as saying “the entire Orthodox community is responsible for this attack when it cultivates a culture of hatred toward fellow Jews rather than acceptance and tolerance.” If the Torah does not accept male homosexual behavior and in fact calls it “to’evah,” then the Torah must be changed.
But the ultimate proof whether I am right, that this was not constructive outside criticism but rather bigotry, will be seen in the days to come. Will these authors apologize for their hasty rush to judgement of the charedi community, now that it has become known that Schlissel was, in fact, crazy? If they do, then I will be delighted to say that I was wrong, as well.
Lisa, I am very disappointed and personally hurt by your words directed against me.
You and I have communicated before. We are in agreement on many issues, and have always been amicable with regards to the exceptions. So I find it difficult to adequately express my surprise and pain to have discovered your essay, in which you accuse me personally of bloodshed.
Yes, you did accuse me personally. You said it explicitly: “The entire Hareidi community spilled this blood.” I have the Fedora hat. I have the beard, the big black yarmulke, and the Tzitzis. And I pray in the right synagogues. You meant me.
I warned that hateful essays would be written. I just didn’t expect someone like yourself to be the writer. Your words were painful precisely because your accusation was both hateful and personal.
I understand that you disagree with our continued fealty to the Book of Leviticus, but our calling a certain act “to’eva” has not, in our community, ever encouraged murder. That is simply because the same Torah that calls that action “to’eva” also requires us to love every Jew, to not hate our brethren, and above all, not to murder. I am not somehow collectively responsible for everything written by a charedi person on a website, and I chose different words myself — but despite what you claimed in your essay, at no time did the website you mentioned ever refer to a person as to’eva, just a parade.
You said that the “small rabbis in the Hareidi community” are calling people to’eva. Can you identify one, or did you simply make an assumption that Hareidim “must” think that way? I suspect the latter — for if you had actually wanted to know what our Rabbis say regarding those with homosexual inclinations, you might have watched or remembered the interviews of HaRav Aharon Feldman and several others in the 2001 movie “Trembling Before G-d.” You would have seen how they balanced uncompromising love for the Torah with uncompromising love for every Jew.
But even without learning what we actually think, surely you observed that Schlissel was in jail for the last ten years, rather than sitting in a class in a charedi neighborhood. If it were true, as you assert, that referencing the Bible leads our extremist members to murder, surely it should have been someone who was actually in our community for the past decade who committed this horrendous crime.
In actuality, there was near silence about the upcoming parade, rather than condemnation. Did you notice that the same website, which has had five articles after the attack — including the incident itself, “Why the Gay Pride Parade Stabber is a Murderer,” an update on the victims, calls for the police chief to resign, and widespread condemnations — had no coverage whatsoever prior to the attack? The (secular) commenter on charedi affairs for Channel 10 noticed the charedi silence, and reflected that Schlissel was more likely to have been driven crazy because the community ignored the parade.
I challenge you to find another population group of 900,000 people — whether Israelis or Americans — with a similar murder rate to ours. Charedim do not murder, neither Arabs or Jews, and neither do we encourage it, with an unparalleled degree of uniformity. This does not mean perfection, because we remain human beings. But we certainly do better than any other group of similar size. Israel’s annual murder rate (excluding victims of terror) is 1.7 per hundred thousand. When was the last time you heard an accusation of murder directed against a charedi person? Surely you know the media would have made quite certain we all knew about it.
Yes, you’ve accused the most peaceful community in Israel of encouraging murder.
We are and remain human beings. We, like any other community, have our share of the mentally ill. We, like any other community, trust the police to do their job. Instead we had a single unhinged individual do a heinous act ten years ago, and when the police let him loose they apparently didn’t contemplate the possibility that he might not be cured of his illness, and might go back again, “k’kelev chozer al kei’o — like a dog returning to its vomit.”
This isn’t to say that the charedi community was entirely absent from the scene — charedim direct and are Jerusalem’s predominant members of the United Hatzalah organization, whose volunteer first responders make Israel’s emergency response time the fastest in the world. That same community that you claim wished to murder those at the parade, was there in numbers to rescue them.
They represent the true heart of the charedi community, willing to sacrifice work and family time to help those in need of urgent care — regardless of whether the person is Jewish, much less his or her level of religiosity. There was one murderer, and dozens of volunteers ready to drop what they were doing to try to save his victims. Is it not obvious that most charedim aim to save lives, not take them?
Yet you didn’t ask questions. You expressed no sympathy for the phenomenon of mental illness and how horrified Schlissel’s family — and extended family — most assuredly are. You reserved no words for the police who released this person from prison three weeks before the parade, and failed to keep an eye on his behavior. Instead, you accused me, simply because I am charedi, of participating in his act — and encouraged your readers to hate me as a result. I hope you can see why I might feel personally hurt.
As I was finishing this essay, I learned that Shira Banki, one of the six victims of Yishai Schlissel, succumbed to her wounds today. She was 16. HaMakom Yinachem, may G-d console all her family and all who mourn our loss.
The Torah tells us in this week’s reading that we must always remember what happened at Sinai. “Just guard yourselves, and guard your souls very well, lest you forget the things that your eyes saw, lest it leave your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make it known to your children and grandchildren, the day that you stood before HaShem your G-d at Chorev” [Dev. 4:9-10].
The Rambam [Maimonides] says (in his Igeres Teiman, his letter to Yemenite Jewry) that this isn’t simply something we believe, but the foundation of Jewish belief. But… isn’t that circular reasoning? How can something be its own foundation? It’s something we believe, therefore we believe it and everything else also. Right?
Actually, no, it’s not circular. Maimonides says that this is the foundation because every Jew knows that his or her own great-great-grandparents believed that his or her own great-great-(great-great-great etc.)-grandparents were there. As in, Jews have traditionally believed that their own forebears were actually at the foot of Mount Sinai and saw it happen.
Maimonides asserts that there is only one way for that belief to take root, and that by the same standards that we know most anything, we are able to analyze this event and reach the conclusion that we know it happened. It’s not just a belief, it’s knowledge.
Why is it so common to dismiss this as just another story? The answer is simple: because of the ramifications. Under most circumstances, no one would believe that a community of millions of people believe that their own ancestors witnessed an event, yet it’s all mythology. If Brazilians were holding an annual feast to commemorate a massive flood that nearly destroyed the community, the impartial observer would tend to believe that the flood must have actually happened — and that’s true even if the flood was reported to have taken place hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Because everyone knows that floods can happen, and it’s possible for communities to escape them by the narrowest of margins.
But knowing that this particular story may be difficult to believe, Maimonides points to this week’s reading: “when you will ask about the first days that happened before you, from the day G-d Created man on the earth and from one end of the heavens to the other, has this ever been, or has [a story] like this ever been heard — has a nation heard the Voice of G-d speaking from inside the fire, as you heard, and lived?” [4:32-33] The Torah says bluntly that, as Maimonides put it, “there never was such a thing before, and there will never be anything like it.”
This is an amazing prediction, especially considering how world history has played out over the past 3300 years. It’s not just that there are other religions, it’s that today over fifty percent of the world’s population derives their beliefs from our Bible. Today’s dominant religions begin here — that G-d revealed Himself to the Jewish Nation. And they all also believe that at some point, the Jews got it wrong.
All of them believe that they know the Jews got it wrong, because someone told them so. Either that someone was a prophet, or that someone was an angel, or that someone was even divinity in human form — but someone told them. No one believes that G-d publicly revealed Himself once again to say so. Today, there are more Americans who believe an angel talked to a man in a cave in upstate New York and showed him the new path, than there are Jews in the world who [try to] follow the rules laid out in the Torah!
What is it about this story, that no one tried to duplicate it? Doesn’t it make more sense to start a new religion by saying that G-d came back to tell us the new way? And for that matter… how did the Torah know and declare with full confidence that although the Jews came to believe the story as told in our Torah, no one would ever get a group of people to believe a new version of this story, ever again?
Maimonides may have been on to something.
First things first: I learned while preparing this that one of the victims of today’s stabbing in Jerusalem is unstable and in critical condition. Whoever he or she may be, and I hope we’ll get his or her name for our Tefilos — please say a kepital (chapter) of Tehilim (Psalms) for his or her speedy recovery.
I hope I’m wrong. But I expect open displays of bigotry in the days ahead, after the “gay pride” parade in Jerusalem was disrupted by a terrorist stabbing.
I am, of course, referring to open displays of bigotry against the Orthodox community. Because if someone uses the actions of a single deranged individual to slander an entire community, to imply that the community somehow supported or abetted the crime via action or attitude, that isn’t fighting bigotry — it’s showing it.
And in this case, the terrorist who ran through Jerusalem’s parade stabbing people, though clearly mentally ill, (probably) grew up in our community and was dressed in the garb of an Orthodox Jew. That he thought this was somehow an appropriate act is evidence prima facie of his evil insanity. The idea that he represented any haredi opinion or school of thought is risible.
Yet sadly, I expect some newscasters, journalists and opinion writers to ignore the fact that there were no similar attacks since 2005, when this very same individual did precisely the same thing — clearly demonstrating that he does not represent any school of thought in the haredi community, as there was no one else to take his place while he rotted in jail.
I expect them to ignore the role of police in protecting the community from terrorists both foreign and domestic, who were clearly aware of this individual and his previous history, knew he had been released just weeks ago, yet apparently did nothing whatsoever to prevent this individual from repeating his terrorist violence:
Several weeks ago, an ultra-Orthodox radio station, Kav HaNeues, interviewed Schlissel after his release from prison, referring to him as a “Haredi terrorist.” Schlissel told the station, “If a single person comes and wants to hold the [gay pride] parade, then therefore in order to do something, something extreme is necessary.” Referring to members of the LGBT community, Schlissel also said that “these impure people want to defile Jerusalem,” and “the objective — I need to stop this parade.”…
Jerusalem District police chief Moshe Adri says police knew Schlissel was released from prison, but didn’t have any concrete intel he was in the area or planning an attack. He says the investigation is in its early stages. A reporter for Channel 2 says Schlissel didn’t hide his intention, and that he had written on the Internet that he would continue his efforts against the LGBT community. When asked whether the police had been aware of rumors on WhatsApp claiming Schlissel was planning an attack, Adri says the police weren’t aware of such rumors.
Don’t get me wrong. I do want to know what the broadcasters and listeners of Kav HaNeues thought he was saying. Usually, when a person says “I’m gonna kill him” we know it’s just words — but here was a guy who did this before. Did anyone think to report him? Did they ignore it? But failing to act without an explicit threat isn’t surprising, though one would hope we would do better.
Terrorism — including terrorism against those trying to promote to’eva in Jerusalem — must be stopped. It is the obligation of the police to stop terrorism, and they clearly failed in their duties in this case.
And we must stand against terrorism, bigotry and hate, in all their many forms.
This is a topic that comes up frequently, and when it appeared on a friend’s Facebook discussion I put these thoughts together.
(A) A big part of Judaism is learning to nullify our will to Hashem’s will. The leaders of our nation have always been the people who did this best — who learned Torah and let it guide them, rather than trying to superimpose their own values on the Torah. A person who goes to a Rav with an important matter almost always has an opinion, he (or she) is just asking for guidance from a person who has learned to do this better than he himself has.
(B) Obviously Rabbonim can err. Why obviously? Because the Torah makes it explicit. Moshe made mistakes. The Sanhedrin will make mistakes and bring a Korban for it. And we follow them anyways — for two reasons. 1) The Torah tells us to. 2) They still know better than we do. They still get it right more often than we do. The Torah still says that Israel without its Sages is like a dove without wings.
One thing that certainly cannot be done is to try to second-guess them based upon an alternate reality that never happened — e.g. saying that “the Holocaust” somehow proves Rabbonim were wrong telling people not to leave Europe.
If we look at Jewish history, it happens repeatedly: appearances are deceiving. What appears to be is not the reality — which is really about where we stand with HaShem. See Megillas Esther, for example. No one looked more wrong than Mordechai did when he refused to bow to Haman, which appeared to have caused the decree to wipe out the Jews. The reality is precisely the opposite; Mordechai’s actions saved us from that same deadly decree.
It is well-known that people who left Europe before the war had tremendous difficulty keeping their level of observance. It was only truly unique people who came over to America or Eretz Yisrael and built without compromise. We simply cannot say that had hundreds of thousands more fled Europe (making the invalid assumption that the Americans or Brits would let them in to the US or EY) and sacrificed their dedication to Hashem U’Toraso, that everything else would have stayed equal. Rommel did not invade EY because he lost one battle to the British after having won a series of others. What would have happened if, to the contrary, he had won that battle as well?
The last book of the Torah, Book of Devarim, is called “Deuteronomy” in English — an Old English translation of Deuteronomium, Latin for “Second Law.” G-d tells Moshe to record what Moshe himself said to Israel, which includes further discussion and elaboration of the Commandments.
Moshe begins, however, by giving Israel Tochacha, rebuke. In modern English we might call it a “stern lecture,” but that fails to capture its full meaning. Moshe lived his entire life as a servant of the Nation. G-d testifies that Moshe was “more humble than anyone” [Num. 12:3]. He was their leader because he was called upon to lead — and showed leadership by demonstrating, as a shepherd, concern for a small lost sheep in his flock. He cared about every person. So if he was criticizing them, it was because he truly desired the very best for them.
Even before he begins to speak, Rashi explains, the Torah describes the People of Israel’s location in a way that reminds us of places where we, Israel, angered the A-lmighty through our misbehavior. And the Torah knows a thing or two about rebuke — why does it say that he spoke “to all of Israel?” Because if only part of them were there, those out in the marketplace at the time would come back and say, “you didn’t respond when he said that? If we had been there, we would’ve answered him!” So Moshe assembled everyone, so that no one could say afterwards that they could have justified themselves but didn’t have the opportunity. And why did Moshe only do this shortly before his death? Otherwise he would have had to rebuke Israel constantly, and we would have been ashamed.
Perhaps the strongest criticism is when the Torah points out that they found themselves eleven days away from Horeb, Mt. Sinai [see 1:2]. Forty years later, they were all of eleven days from where they received the Torah.
And there is a deeper message, Rashi tells us, behind mentioning “eleven days from Horeb.” — to get from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea takes eleven days, but excluding the days when Israel stopped (due to its own actions), they traveled there in only three. That is how anxious G-d was to bring us to our land! And then at Kadesh Barnea the spies went out… and as a result, Israel traveled in a circuit around Mt. Seir for forty years.
This is a good message to be reading on the eve of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day both Temples were destroyed. Even the bad things that happen to us are for our own benefit — and usually because we, Israel, did something wrong. We live in a time when people refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, and we are taught to take responsibility beyond what even seems logical: “every generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed during their time” [Yerushalmi Yoma 1:1].
Today there is a terrible disconnect between cause and effect — by which I mean spiritual cause. 78% of Jews in America told the Pew report that “remembering the Holocaust” is an important part of being Jewish. But where are they on the ninth of Av? On Tisha B’Av, we remember terrible things that befell the Jewish People, and remind ourselves that it is ultimately up to us to do better, to honor the memory of the holy martyrs of our nation by coming closer to G-d and being truly deserving of peace in our land.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis continued to divert trains and soldiers from the front lines in order to take more Jews to the ovens.
During intense sanctions, the Iranians continued to divert funds from basic necessities in order to support Hamas, Hezbollah, and other organizations devoted to the murder of infidels, but especially Jews.
It is obvious to everyone, including the Administration, that Hamas and Hezbollah will be major beneficiaries of sanctions relief. The Administration acknowledges this, and says that since the Iranians are doing that anyway, it can’t be worse.
This seems to this observer to be beyond any defensible logic — and a path to the murder of innocents.
Iran continues to call for “Death to Israel” and invests money in the murder of Jews. Netanyahu opposes any form of sanctions relief when that money will be spent upon murdering Jews.
The President has decided that it is Netanyahu who is being unreasonable.
[OK, updated. It has been called to my attention that for assorted reasons (a double-standard high among them), we have to speak more respectfully of this particular President than of all previous presidents (and I, for one, would have still less complimentary things to say about Past President Jimmy Carter). So despite “hail to the thief” and far worse hurled at George W. Bush, we have to bypass the town crier test and play nicely. If this turns out to be not a double standard, but rather an impartial new standard, that would be for the best — but should a Republican be elected, I for one won’t be holding my breath waiting to see this new standard maintained. And no, btw, Rabbi Adlerstein was not the one who enabled me to see the error of my ways.]
Clearly, the President is not evil. But the idea that Netanyahu is the unreasonable one sounds crazy to me! We hope that he and all his colleagues in our national government will see the Israelis as indeed not unreasonable, and very justified in their approach… and that they will, in the end, reject a “deal” that enables Iran to fund terror and sidestep inspections.
All of us can, at most, “Strive for Truth” [It’s a borrowed title], and so I appreciate Rabbi Shafran’s clarification of his position. And to the best of my recollection, there hasn’t been a back & forth discussion/argument of this nature on Cross-Currents in over a decade, much as different authors often disagree. The more one reads Cross-Currents, the more the reader recognizes that the Orthodox are hardly the monolith they are often portrayed to be; a debate of this nature just makes this as explicit as possible, and thus where Rabbi Shafran and I emphatically agree is that this is a positive dialog for several reasons.
I see no reason to depart from Rabbi Shafran’s enumeration of my points, and I’ll let people respond to both articles in the comments below.
1) My point was that there seemed no need for Rabbi Shafran to wander down this road, especially considering the tenuous ground upon which his arguments stand. What is the purpose of demonizing Oren? Instead of being a brilliant historian and dedicated public servant, all of a sudden he’s a right-wing nut job attacking Obama just to sell books, and Kafui Tov for not recognizing how wonderful Obama really is. Really?
Oren’s not a right-winger, he’s not a Netanyahu crony, and he only confirmed what those of us who have followed the news reports carefully have seen for years. As Rabbi Shafran conceded, the egregious omission of Israel in the countries rushing to provide aid to Haiti — that and that alone — disturbed him greatly, and “seemed to contradict” his “positive judgment of Mr. Obama’s regard for Israel.”
As described by Oren’s close friend, Yossi Klein Halevi, Oren had a good reason to release this book now:
Michael Oren is one of the most selfless public servants of the Jewish people I’ve been privileged to know. And he wrote “Ally” for one overriding reason: to challenge Obama on Iran. That’s why he timed its release just before the deadline for concluding the Iranian negotiations. His explicit intention was to call into question the credibility of the President of the United States when he repeatedly declares that he has Israel’s back. Not because Michael believes that President Obama hates Israel or wishes us harm, but because Michael believes – as do I – that the President’s Iranian policy is placing Israel under existential threat. “Ally” is Michael’s cry of alarm – the culmination of a commitment that we began together in 2006, when we co-authored an article for the New Republic warning against American complacency toward a nuclearizing Iran.
2) It’s clear that Rabbi Shafran did not understand what Oren said. The quote, in context, reads “The first principle was ‘no daylight.’ The U.S. and Israel always could disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage common enemies and render Israel vulnerable.” It is extremely well-known that the United States disapproved of the expansion of settlements, and said so. Could Michael Oren, familiar as he was with the history of the US-Israel relationship, have intended to say that all of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II had never publicly disagreed with Israel at all? No.
What was Oren actually saying? That Obama made it a policy. Instead of highlighting the firm partnership between the US and Israel, he highlighted the disagreements — as he said he would do in his 2009 speech. That is what Oren was talking about, and it remains unrebutted.
3) I do not understand Rabbi Shafran’s claim that the change and tenor “is Mr. Oren’s judgment only.” The Bush letter acknowledged that Israel would not leave the entirety of the West Bank: “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” The unwritten subtext approved Israel building in existing Jewish neighborhoods and settlements. Having been approved by both the House and Senate (including the votes of Sen. H. Clinton and Rep. R. Emanuel), it was a firm pledge from the United States to Israel.
Sorry, but Rabbi Shafran can’t have it both ways. If he wants to claim that there was no shift, then why did Obama need to disavow the letter? Why was an assurance from the House, Senate and previous President null and void, if nothing had changed? The very fact that the letter was set aside is clear proof otherwise. And if this had precedent, neither Rabbi Shafran nor any of Oren’s other critics have shown us where. [What Obama did was set a precedent, relevant to its relationships with all other countries: the commitment of one administration, though backed by both houses of Congress, can be dropped by the next without a backwards glance. The United States feels no obligation to keep its word.]
Further, Rabbi Shafran claims that “Mr. Obama has never addressed his position on the ultimate status of any settlements, opting instead to leave all such things to any negotiations between Israel and the PA.” But this, too, is incorrect. What Obama did was adopt the Palestinian negotiating position as US policy.
From page 208 of the book: “the capstone [of Obama’s new plan] would be recognition of the 1967 lines as the basis for peace. This, the president would likely say, would merely express the obvious and reiterate long-standing US policy. In reality, though, America’s embrace of the 1967 lines would undermine the Terms of Reference so fastidiously forged by Hillary Clinton. That TOR talked of ‘the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines’ – that is, not the Israeli or American goal. Endorsing those borders, even with mutually agreed land swaps, meant granting an immense concession to the Palestinians while they refused to even enter peace talks. It meant tying those talks to lines that, in broad areas in and around Jerusalem and along the Jordan Valley, no longer existed… Instead of taking Abbas to task for not negotiating and for opposing construction in neighborhoods Israel would ultimately retain, the administration rewarded him.”
There is an account earlier in the book which shows how Obama’s new attitude played out in real life — both towards Israel, and towards the Bush promise.
Ramat Shlomo is a (charedi) neighborhood on the northern edge of Jerusalem, and unquestionably one of those neighborhoods included in Bush’s letter as part of Israel. It is slightly to the northwest of Ramat Eshkol, and as much a part of Jerusalem. In 2010, as Joe Biden came to Israel, the Interior Ministry approved a plan to build 1600 new housing units. The plot of land being developed lies in between Ramat Shlomo and the green line, between HaRav Rephael Toledano Street and Yigal Yadin (Route 1). An you can see from the map, this simply develops a small tract of land that links Ramat Shlomo to the rest of Jerusalem.
In “Ally,” Oren describes how he and everyone else in the administration was as surprised as the Americans, when a Ministry bureaucrat approved the permits for these new units. From pp 137-139:
Finally, close to two a.m., Ron Dermer and I ran with a handwritten draft to the hotel lobby where [US Ambassador to Israel] Dan Shapiro waited peevishly. He visibly brightened, though, when he read our assurances. We typed them up in the business center and went upstairs for a few hours sleep.
The air itself felt supercharged the following day as the vice president rose to the Tel Aviv University podium. He spoke about feeling at home in the Jewish state, about the “unbreakable bond… impervious to any shifts,” between it and the United States… But then he turned to the Ramat Shlomo plan, which, he said, undermines the trust required for productive negotiations. ‘At the request of President Obama, I condemn it immediately and unequivocally.’
Some left-wing students clapped at this as well, but other Israelis seethed. Diplomacy provides a word-scale for expressing levels of displeasure, beginning with regret and disapprove and escalating to denounce and deplore. But the harshest of all is condemn. “the administration never condemned Iran for killing its own people,” Ron muttered, “but Israel gets condemned for building homes in a Jewish neighborhood in our capital city.”…
I… boarded a plane and arrived in the United States at five o’clock Friday morning to learn that Secretary of State Clinton had excoriated Netanyahu for forty-five minutes over the phone, rebuking him for humiliating the president and undermining America’s ability to deal with pressing Middle East issues… And then I heard that the State Department, protesting “the deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship,” had summoned me to an immediate meeting.
As in the case of the word condemn, diplomacy provides a calibrated lexicon to describe requests for high-level meetings. The scale descends from the amicable “respectfully invited” to the more neutral “asked to come.” The lowest, by far, is “summoned.”
So all of a sudden, building within Jerusalem meant the Israelis were not interested in peace. During the freeze insisted upon by Obama, people in Ramat Eshkol could not repair their porch — and Rabbi Shafran calls this consistent with previous US policy!
4) Whether or not the US has an obligation to inform Israel was never under discussion. The question to be asked is, did Obama value the historically tight collaboration with Israel on critical issues of national security (to both countries)? By deliberately shutting out Israel, and consciously acting to limit Israel’s options, he showed an entirely different attitude than previous Presidents. Oren, as the Ambassador of Israel to the United States, certainly knew the history of communication between the two countries, and found Obama’s refusal to communicate with Israel an ongoing concern — especially when it came to a nuclear Iran.
From p. 334: “Administration sources meanwhile continued leaking reports of IDF air strikes in Syria. One of these, a May 3 bombing of a Damascus warehouse purportedly containing yet another shipment of advanced missiles for Hezbollah, was said to have killed forty-two Syrian soldiers. Israel again withheld comment on the action, but the American leak spurred Assad to threaten counterattacks. At the embassy, I asked my staff what would impel some U.S. official to risk triggering bloodshed between Israel and Syria. Perhaps, one diplomat suggested, the White House wanted to distract Israel’s attention from efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.”
5) Note that the Dominican Republic is connected to Haiti; they share a common island. According to Oren’s account — and the JTA’s revised version — the Israel ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Amos Radian, was the first official to come to Haiti following the quake on Wednesday the 13th, and was joined by an advance team to find a site for Israel’s hospital on the 14th.
But here, again from the book, is Oren’s fuller description of what happened, from pp. 131-133:
It began on January 14, forty-eight hours after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti. Vast swaths of the impoverished Caribbean country lay in ruins, with at least 150,000 dead. With its war-born experience in dealing with casualties, its expert medical teams, and its biblical traditions of caring for the week, Israel responded. More than 200 Israelis, many of them volunteers from the IsraAID relief organization, immediately took off for Haiti and set up the first completely equipped hospital unit. Yet the operation could not have been mounted without the logistical assistance of the United States. Some of the Israelis even slept in chairs at the US Embassy. Throughout, I was on the phone around the clock with the State Department, coordinating our joint efforts.
So again, Oren knew what the real situation was, because he was intimately involved. He knew that the Americans were quite well aware that what Israel was doing was on an entirely different level than that of any of the countries that made Obama’s list, up to and including the US itself — in the words of one American doctor, “it’s something that almost makes you embarrassed to be an American” when he compared Israel’s hospital effort to their own.
None of the critics have successfully challenged any of Oren’s facts, because they cannot. This is classic mudslinging and character assassination — throw anything you can at Oren and hope that something sticks. When proven wrong, just go try a different angle. This isn’t our way. Ally is not only precise in its descriptions of events, it is backed up by the record — and as such, it stands on its merits.
All of us can, at most, “Strive for Truth” [It’s a borrowed title], and so I appreciate Rabbi Shafran’s clarification of his position. And to the best of my recollection, there hasn’t been a back & forth discussion/argument of this nature on Cross-Currents in over a decade, much as different authors often disagree. The more one reads Cross-Currents, the more the reader recognizes that the Orthodox are hardly the monolith they are often portrayed to be; a debate of this nature just makes this as explicit as possible, and thus where Rabbi Shafran and I emphatically agree is that this is a positive dialog for several reasons.
I see no reason to depart from Rabbi Shafran’s enumeration of my points, and I’ll let people respond to both articles in the comments below.
1) My point was that there seemed no need for Rabbi Shafran to wander down this road, especially considering the tenuous ground upon which his arguments stand. Oren only confirmed what those of us who have followed the news reports carefully have seen for years. As Rabbi Shafran conceded, the egregious omission of Israel in the countries rushing to provide aid to Haiti — that and that alone — disturbed him greatly, and “seemed to contradict” his “positive judgment of Mister Obama’s regard for Israel.”
As described by Oren’s close friend, Yossi Klein Halevi, Oren had a good reason to release this book now:
Michael Oren is one of the most selfless public servants of the Jewish people I’ve been privileged to know. And he wrote “Ally” for one overriding reason: to challenge Obama on Iran. That’s why he timed its release just before the deadline for concluding the Iranian negotiations. His explicit intention was to call into question the credibility of the President of the United States when he repeatedly declares that he has Israel’s back. Not because Michael believes that President Obama hates Israel or wishes us harm, but because Michael believes – as do I – that the President’s Iranian policy is placing Israel under existential threat. “Ally” is Michael’s cry of alarm – the culmination of a commitment that we began together in 2006, when we co-authored an article for the New Republic warning against American complacency toward a nuclearizing Iran.
2) The quote, in context, reads “The first principle was ‘no daylight.’ The U.S. and Israel always could disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage common enemies and render Israel vulnerable.” In context, Oren made an error of semantics. It is extremely well-known that the United States, for example, disapproved of the expansion of settlements, and said so. Could Michael Oren, familiar as he was with the history of the US-Israel relationship, argue that all of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II had not said so publicly? No.
What was Oren actually saying? Let me use one example from the book.
Ramat Shlomo is a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem, and unquestionably one of those neighborhoods included in Bush’s letter as part of Israel. In 2010, as Joe Biden came to Israel, the Interior Ministry approved a plan to build 1600 new housing units. The plot of land lies in between Ramat Shlomo and the green line, between HaRav Rephael Toledano Street and Yigal Yadin (Route 1). In “Ally,” Oren describes how he and everyone else in the administration was as surprised as the Americans. From pp 137-139:
Finally, close to two a.m., Ron Dermer and I ran with a handwritten draft to the hotel lobby where [US Ambassador to Israel] Dan Shapiro waited peevishly. He visibly brightened, though, when he read our assurances. We typed them up in the business center and went upstairs for a few hours sleep.
The air itself felt supercharged the following day as the vice president rose to the Tel Aviv University podium. He spoke about feeling at home in the Jewish state, about the “unbreakable bond… impervious to any shifts,” between it and the United States… But then he turned to the Ramat Shlomo plan, which, he said, undermines the trust required for productive negotiations. ‘At the request of President Obama, I condemn it immediately and unequivocally.’
Some left-wing students clapped at this as well, but other Israelis seethed. Diplomacy provides a word-scale for expressing levels of displeasure, beginning with regret and disapprove and escalating to denounce and deplore. But the harshest of all is condemn. “the administration never condemned Iran for killing its own people,” Ron muttered, “but Israel gets condemned for building homes in a Jewish neighborhood in our capital city.”…
I… boarded a plane and arrived in the United States at five o’clock Friday morning to learn that Secretary of State Clinton had excoriated the Netanyahu for forty-five minutes over the phone, rebuking him for humiliating the president and undermining America’s ability to deal with pressing Middle East issues… And then I heard that the State Department, protesting “the deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship,” had summoned me to an immediate meeting.
As in the case of the word condemn, diplomacy provides a calibrated lexicon to describe requests for high-level meetings. The scale descends from the amicable “respectfully invited” to the more neutral “asked to come.” The lowest, by far, is “summoned.”
That is what Oren was talking about, and it remains unrebutted. Rabbi Shafran harped on Oren’s poor word choice, while leaving the veracity of his point unchallenged.
3) I do not understand Rabbi Shafran’s claim that the change and tenor “is Mr. Oren’s judgment only.” The Bush posture acknowledged that Israel would not leave the entirety of the West Bank: “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” The unwritten subtext approved Israel building in existing Jewish neighborhoods and settlements. The Obama State Department explicitly disavowed the Bush letter, and, as above, Obama launched a full-scale verbal assault on Israel, using “condemn” and “summoned” to publicly express extreme disapproval. If this had precedent, neither Rabbi Shafran nor any of Oren’s other critics have shown us where.
4) Whether or not the US has an obligation to inform Israel was never under discussion. Oren, as the Ambassador of Israel to the United States, certainly knew the history of communication between the two countries, and has found Obama’s refusal to communicate with Israel and ongoing concern — especially when it comes to a nuclear Iran.
5) Note that the Dominican Republic is connected to Haiti; they share a common island. According to Oren’s account, Israel ambassador to the Dominican Republic was the first official to come to Haiti following the quake, along with an advance team to find a site for Israel’s hospital.
But here, again from the book, is Oren’s fuller description of what happened, from pp. 131-133:
The Clash, ironically, was preceded by a real disaster – and a moving display of US-Israel harmony. It began on January 14, forty-eight hours after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti. Vast swaths of the impoverished Caribbean country lay in ruins, with at least 150,000 dead. With its war-born experience in dealing with casualties, its expert medical teams, and its biblical traditions of caring for the week, Israel responded. More than 200 Israelis, he many of them volunteers from the IsraAID relief organization, immediately took off for Haiti and set up the first completely equipped hospital unit. Yet the operation could not have been mounted without the logistical assistance of the United States. Some of the Israelis even slept in shares at the US Embassy. Throughout, I was on the phone around the clock with the State Department, coordinating our joint efforts.
So again, Oren knew what the real situation was, because he was intimately involved. He knew that the Americans were quite well aware that what Israel was doing was on an entirely different level than any of the countries that made Obama’s list, up to and including the US itself — in the words of one American doctor, “it’s something that almost makes you embarrassed to be an American” when he compared Israel’s hospital effort to their own.
None of the critics have challenged any of Oren’s facts, because they cannot.